I think the conservative case of criminal justice reform is very clear and comes from a couple of angles. One, the conservative principle of the punishment meeting the crime and personal responsibility and so-forth. Someone should explain to me why 3-5 years in prison is a just sentence for being in possession of pot, or even cocaine, when all they’re being charged with is illegal possession of an illegal narcotic. Then the other reason being from a fiscally conservative standpoint. Locking away millions of people in prison is very expensive. Especially when we don’t get much for that investment when you look at how violent our prisons are. The fact that we have so many people returning to prison after they get released. The poor health care, lack of opportunity for self-improvement, all the inmates that have serious mental health issues that don’t get treated and I could go on.

This is not about going soft, or hard on crime. We know the dangerous consequences when serious crimes are not taken seriously and when lighter crimes are treated harshly. You get a country where people don’t feel safe to leave their homes when you go too soft. And an overly expensive and wasteful criminal justice system when you go too hard on crimes where the offender could just have been in rehab, a halfway house, done their time in county jail, given probation, or a combination of all of these factors. This should not be about being tough or, soft, or even liberal, or conservative. Even though as a Liberal I believe we have the right approach here. This should be about being smart on crime and being just with our criminal justice system. The sanctions meeting the crimes and the sanctions coming with opportunity for self-improvement so the offender doesn’t end up back in the criminal justice system.

The reasons why you have Conservatives like Senator Mike Lee, coming together with Progressives like Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and why Conservatives like Newt Gingrich are coming together with Progressives and Liberals outside of Congress, is because the Center-Right and Center-Left both see the waste an injustice in the criminal justice system. And in an era with low economic and job growth and high debt and deficits, you have the two sides looking at ways to cut waste in government and get more bang from our taxpayer bucks. The criminal justice system is a great place to start. When you consider that we have two-million people in prison in America with so many non-violent offenders being sent away for long prison sentences. When everyone involved especially the public would have been better off with a lighter approach. And reserve our harsh sentences for our violent offenders.

Older Posts on The New Democrat

Recent Posts: The Daily Review Plus

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review Is Donald Trump the best salesman we’ve ever seen in American politics as far as getting people to by what he’s selling regardless of the quality of products that he’s selling, or is he the best conman we’ve ever seen in American politics? If you look […]

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review I haven’t read Denis Leary’s book so I can’t get you any real analysis of it whatsoever. But I was alive, conscience, and in America, for the entire time in 2016. Except when I wasn’t sleeping, which is any longer than the average American sleeps. […]

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review If you’re a Socialist especially a hardcore Socialist who looks up to people like Che Guevara and even have some respect at least for some aspects of communism, even if you don’t like the authoritarian aspects of it, Ayn Rand literally is the devil. Because she […]

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review I believe anyone who is a realist and just doesn’t call themselves a realist because they have some need to have people believed they’re smarter and more advanced than they really are, but literally lives by the attitude or practice of accepting situations for what they […]

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review I’m not from Alabama and have never even actually spent a day in Alabama, but I get two things out of this story. One, that this behavior (assuming Roy Moore is guilty) is actually normal and if Roy Moore wasn’t running for the U.S. Senate, maybe […]

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review Under George Orwell, 1984 is a dystopia where everything is in black and white and apparently rainbows don’t exist. You can have black or white, water or skim milk, thats it and no other choices. A very depressing state where it’s always dark with no light […]

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review When I hear someone tell me that they’re spiritual, but not religious, my first reaction if I’m not smirking is something generally like, “really?” Someone who is religious believes in a God who is a superhuman controlling power and a belief in something greater than them […]

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review What Socialists don’t like about Libertarians and libertarianism, is that Libertarians have this inane idea (according to Socialists) that people should be allowed to make a good living and then be able to live off of those rewards. The fruits of their labor, to sound like […]

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review Of course there are perhaps millions of reasons why Alabama is considered a backwards stuck in the 1850s, let alone 1950s state that perhaps only Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the other gulf states could be proud of. Like people being selfish when it comes to their […]

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review Imagine a President Hillary Clinton if you can just for a minute and especially considering the current President of the United States., that shouldn’t be too scary. Millions of men who are on the Alt-Right and the Nationalist -Right in America, would be protesting daily about […]